I love listening to music even more than I love to talk or write about it. I’ve had the opportunity to hear pretty much every format available over the last 50 years or so, from pocket transistor radios to HQ digital streaming services. Vinyl records are my jam, my crush, my musical mountaintop. They require interaction, communion, and, best of all, your full non-screen attention in an attention-span deprived world. It wasn’t too long after I fell for the seduction of the shiny, silver CD back in the late 80s that I realized convenience came at too high a price. Compared to vinyl, CDs sounded dry and airless. If the best that can be said about your music delivery system is that it’s numerically accurate, there’s a point being missed somewhere. I also didn’t plan on how much I would miss the idea that an album has two sides. It’s division of songs created by manufacturing limitations, I know, but it’s crucial one for me. When CDs eliminated the concept, most albums I listened to seemed too long, especially the ones I knew from my original vinyl days.
I went vinyl-less from 1990 to 2010. On June 13, 2010, I started buying LPs again, right about the time the so-called vinyl revival was kicking into gear. I went back and forth about it because the major record companies weren’t making many new vinyl records yet, most had closed their record pressing plants years earlier. I had to decide if I wanted to invest in new equipment just to play whatever I could find in the used bins of the few record stores that were still around. Obviously, I did. I jumped off that cliff and never looked back.
So, this post is for anybody in my general age group who many be feeling nostalgic for the old days, when everybody had a stereo instead of a computer, when you visited your friends with a stack of your new LPs under your arm, and especially when the music you loved sounded better somehow than it ever has since. Your memories are not wrong. I’ve been through it, paid close attention to how things have changed for record lovers over the last 4 or 5 decades, and I’m here to help. If you’re a younger music-lover maybe thinking about joining the vinyl renaissance, this is for you, too. You just have to promise me you’ll never call records “vinyls” okay?
EQUIPMENT: What you’ll need if you want to play records again
Stereo stores are about as common as Blockbuster Video locations these days, so you’re on your own this time around. I’m gonna quickly hit the basics, but if you want more in-depth info, just ask questions in the comment section. I got your back.
• A turntable, a power source, and speakers – The essential ingredients for vinyl playback. I went the old school route and picked them up as separate components. Plug the turntable into an amp or receiver, run cables from the amp to the speakers, plug everything in and off you go! Depending on your budget and space, this is, to paraphrase the Grateful Dead, the golden road to unlimited vinyl devotion. But I’m going to take a short geek detour and talk about something called the phono preamp for a bit, because this little chunk of electronics can either trip you up or open up new vinyl system possibilities if you get a handle on it.
• Phono preamp – That tiny needle, the stylus, that rides in the record grooves and retrieves the sound, produces an equally tiny electrical signal. If there’s no preamp in the signal path, you’re not gonna hear your music, much less be able to annoy your neighbors with your beloved BTO records. For the full vinyl music enjoyment experience, that’s a bad thing. That tiny signal has to be amplified somewhere along the way. If you’re starting completely from scratch, all you need to do is make sure there are input jacks labeled “phono” on the back of your amp/receiver. That’s where the built-in preamp circuitry lives. If you already have an A/V (home theater) system with speakers and a power supply, check the back for phono inputs. If they’re not there, don’t panic, you can still use it as a vinyl system, you just need to add the preamp. There are a bunch of them on the market, some inexpensive, some breathtakingly pricey, just small little plug-in boxes that go between the turntable and the power supply and let you use whatever amp or receiver you have. Problem solved.
But the genius solution that turntable makers came up with when they realized people wanted to set up vinyl systems using modern A/V receivers with no phono inputs, was to build the preamp into the turntable itself. A lot of new players have a little switch on the back to turn a preamp on or off. If it’s turned on, you can plug the turntable into any available jacks on the back of your receiver and you're golden. At the same time, computer and TV sound engineers introduced the wonders known as powered speakers. They also have their own amp and don’t need an external one. If space and money are keeping you from setting up an old school stereo system, you can pick up a turntable with a preamp, plug it into a pair of powered speakers, and get all the record-spinning benefits in a much smaller footprint. Modern technology to the rescue.
• Storage – No way around it, vinyl records take up space. For some folks, that’s the deal breaker. A way to store them is essential, you can’t leave your records piled on the floor or leaning against a wall. They need to be stored vertically to prevent damage or warping. Ikea has made a killing off the vinyl boom because collectors realized their Kallax cube-shaped storage units are exactly the right size for record storage. Size, yes, durability, not so much. There are some spectacular disaster movie-type photos on the internet of people who built a whole Kallax record wall, only to have it collapse under the weight and spill records all over the room like molten lava. Still, they’re a pretty good solution if the smallest 2x2 cube unit is all you’ll need. That translates into about 200 records worth of storage for $50. I use a sturdy repurposed bookshelf with adjustable shelves, also a fine solution. Old school milk or fruit crates? Still dandy if you can find them.
• Record Players - I hesitate to bring these up, but their market share leaves no doubt that a lot of people have gone this simpler route to get back into vinyl. They generally look like a big, hinged box. Open it up and you have your platter, tonearm, cartridge, power supply, and built-in speakers. Just plug it in and throw on a record. It’s a great shortcut, but there are a couple of things to consider before you order your first Crosley.
The built-in speakers tend to sound pretty thin, for one. Personally, sound quality is a huge part of my goosebump-raising enjoyment of listening to music, but that’s just me. If you don’t care about that, and a lot of people don’t, then forget I mentioned it. You do you. The bigger issue is the lack of something called tracking force adjustment, which every decent turntable has. With most one-box players, the stylus rides in the record grooves heavy, I mean really heavy. Think elephant on a bicycle in the mud heavy. You can actually damage your records slightly every time you play them as the needle cuts into the vinyl. Without the ability to adjust the tracking force, there’s no way to ease up on that pressure. If there's a plus side, the internal speakers won’t likely be good enough to allow you to hear the degradation as time goes on. Are one-box players better than not being able to play records at all? I’m going to land on yes, but approach them with caution.
ACCESSORIES: Here’s where it starts to get dodgy. A bunch of (mostly) crap you’ll be told you need.
Let’s say you made the investment and you’re ready to spin. You may be tempted to seek out information about the current state of the hobby the way a lot of us get information about anything these days, YouTube videos. There’s a loosely organized group of channels in YouTube Land known collectively as the Vinyl Community (VC), and let me tell ya, these people are fetishists of the highest order. Watch a few and you’re sure to come across one or more who’ll let you know that no matter how you’re handling and playing your vinyl records, you’re doing it wrong. Here’s some stuff they’ll be telling you is necessary.
• Record and stylus cleaners – Okay, I’m on board with these. Records collect dust. Used records usually come with dust (and surprisingly often, pet hair) at no extra charge. I have one of those old school DiscWasher-type record cleaning brushes and a bottle of fluid on hand to swipe off the worst of it. The stylus collects some grit from the grooves, too. Most of it you can blow away with a short puff, but it doesn’t hurt to have a small, soft brush or gel pad to give it a better cleaning occasionally.
But beyond that, insanity lies. There are huge, expensive machines out there with fluid basins, rotating motors, vacuums, even ultrasound capability, and you’ll be told that you should be putting your records through the process EVERY SINGLE TIME you want to play one, even if the record is brand new out of the shrinkwrap. Nope. I don’t and my records all sound great with minimal fuss. Again, you do you, but there’s a big difference between what you might want and what you’ll actually need in this category. Just do me a favor and ignore the really crazy ones who’ll be demonstrating how to cover your vinyl with a layer of wood glue.
• Mostly useless products – This is 100% investment collector stuff. From folks who are more concerned about maintaining the highest resale value of their collection than just enjoying the music, and there are a lot of them in the VC. First, you should throw out the paper inner sleeves that come with most records asap. Paper might cause scuffs on the vinyl surface. Personally, I’ve never seen a so-called paper scuff. These days, you’re supposed to replace them with archival polyester sleeves, with or without rice paper liners. If that sounds like a pricey way to go, you're catching on quickly. The next step is to then put the whole record jacket inside a polyester jacket condom kinda thing, so the album covers don’t rub against each other in the storage unit. I’m not making this stuff up; people really do this. And tell you emphatically that you should, too. I don’t, and my records don’t look any different than the day I bought them. I don’t stomp on them or toss them around the room, and that seems to be all it takes protection-wise.
• The useless crap – Here’s where it all gets pretty funny, or sad, not sure which. If you go video digging (and you should, for amusement value if nothing else) you’ll find you need a record weight, a heavy disc that sits on top of the LP label while the record is playing. Why? No clue. Even the users can’t quite tell you. It’s either to improve the sonic performance or make a warped record play better. Or both. I vote neither. You can spend at least $25 on a hole reamer, a little device that shaves the hole in the center of the record slightly bigger if it’s hard to get on and off the turntable spindle. What they don’t tell you is you can solve the same problem in a few seconds with a pencil. There are record grabbers, little tongs with soft pads on the end so you don’t have to touch the vinyl with your disgusting, oil-laden fingers. And no self-respecting vinyl enthusiast should be without a pair, or several pairs, of white cotton gloves. Your records don't know where your hands have been.
Part two of this guide will look at the records themselves, the sun at the center of the vinyl solar system. That’s where the real changes have happened, especially if you’re remembering the way things were back in the day. They’re still round (mostly), and still black (sometimes) but, for better or worse, that’s where the similarity ends. Stay tuned…
EARWORM: Roxy Music, “More Than This” – No reason other than it’s a fabulous song and you can't hear too many of those.
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